The Libertarian Party on Sunday picked former Republican Rep. Bob Barr to be its presidential candidate after six rounds of balloting.
Barr beat research scientist Mary Ruwart, who also sought the party's presidential nomination unsuccessfully in 1983, on the final ballot. The vote was 324-276.
Barr endorsed Wayne Allyn Root, who was eliminated in the fifth round, to be his vice-presidential nominee.
Barr left the GOP in 2006 over what he called bloated spending and civil liberties intrusions by the Bush administration.
The former Georgia congressman said he's not in the race to be a spoiler.
"I'm a competitor and I'm in this to win. I do not view the role of the Libertarian Party to be a spoiler and I certainly have no intention of being a spoiler," Barr said.
Barr said he expects the party to be on the ballot in at least 48 states and perhaps all 50 if the party can qualify in West Virginia and Oklahoma. Barr said he also expects to be invited to the national political debates by qualifying with poll support of 15 percent or more of registered voters.
Sunday's election also marked the end of the latest chapter in the political career of Mike Gravel, a former senator from Alaska who recently dropped out of the Democratic presidential race.
"I just ended my political career," he said. "From 15 years old to now, my political career is over, and it's no big deal. I'm a writer, I'm a lecturer, I'm going to push the issues of freedom and liberty. I'm going to push those issues until the day I die."
Gravel left the Democratic Party after he was excluded from some Democratic debates because he failed to meet fundraising or polling thresholds. He said the Democratic Party no longer represented his values because it continues to sustain Iraq war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism.

September 28, 2007
by CommonDreams.org

Democrats Were Charged To End A War, Not Start One
by Mike Gravel

Hillary Clinton was either misinformed or economical with the truth in Wednesday night’s debate when she responded to my challenge to her by saying the Senate’s resolution earlier in the day on Iran was designed to permit economic sanctions against individual members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

She and her staff should know the United Nations Security Council on March 24 already slapped economic sanctions on individual Guard Members. Like the Red Army in China, Iran allows Guard commanders to own and run private companies. Security Council Resolution 1747, which the United States voted for, froze financial assets held outside Iran on the seven military commanders, including General Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr and six other admirals and generals.

I know of no law dictating the State Department must first designate individuals or groups as terrorists before sanctions can be imposed on them. Dozens of countries have been under U.S. unilateral sanctions that are not designated as terrorist. The U.S. first imposed sanctions on Iran in 1979 over the hostages, not terrorism. The only possible purpose of the Senate resolution asking the State Department to designate the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization is to set it up for military attack in George Bush’s war on terror.

As Virginia senator Jim Webb valiantly said in the Senate, the United States has never before designated the military services of a sovereign state a terrorist group. Indeed, though there is international dispute over the definition of terrorism, there is little disagreement on the legal point that terrorists are non-state actors who target civilians, i.e., never members of a government. Governments can be guilty of war crimes, but not terrorism. And the resolution talks about attacks on American troops, not civilians.

The hypocrisy of Hillary and the 75 other senators who called for more unilateral sanctions on Iran, was exposed Monday by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier who said, according to Spiegel Magazine, that American companies are violating existing U.S. sanctions by surreptitiously doing business with Iran through front companies in Dubai.

Joe Lieberman wrote the resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq that was passed with Democratic support on October 11, 2002. Lieberman’s new resolution setting up a Bush-Cheney invasion of Iran passed by 76 to 22 with Democratic backing on September 26, 2007. These are two dates that will live in infamy in the 21st century. Led by Senator Clinton, it was another sad day for the Senate and for Senate Democrats, who were elected to the majority in November in order to end a war, not start a new one.

Mike Gravel is a former US Senator from Alaska and is currently running for the Democratic Nomination for President.

Governor Dean. As a lifelong Democrat––proud when my party
did great things and occasionally ashamed when it did the wrong things––I
honor and commend your leadership in rebuilding the party in every corner
of this nation. Even more, you have my respect for your earlier and outspoken
opposition to the Iraq war in your own presidential candidacy.
I plan to speak truth to power today. You, the delegates, have the power
to decide who will be the Democratic nominee. I also plan to speak truth
to the American people, who have the power to choose the next President
of the United State.
But first, I have one small favor to ask of all of you. Whenever anyone
raises the question of my age in this campaign, please point out that
Washington is in great need of adult supervision.
Permit me to introduce my wife Whitney, the love of my life, and my sister
Marie. Between them with the iconic hat, is Granny “D,” Doris
Haddock, my strongest supporter in New Hampshire. Other candidates may
have large campaign bank accounts; I’ll take Granny “D”
on my side.
Fairness. Freedom. Justice. Morality. Opportunity. Peace. All goals of
our Founding Fathers and concepts central to the character of most Americans.
Our Founders envisioned the People and their political leaders working
together to nurture these goals and to shape these concepts from generation
to generation. Unfortunately, early on, in a compromise to perpetuate
the evil institution of slavery in the Constitution, the People lost their
power to amend the Constitution and make laws. The compromisers knew the
People would not ratify a Constitution that legalized slavery and would
outlaw it if they had lawmaking powers. The results of this moral compromise
brought about the primacy of representative government and its monopoly
on lawmaking power.
History teaches us that nations fail when leaders fail their people. The
decision to invade Iraq without provocation and fraudulently sold to the
American people, by a President consumed with messianic purpose, sadly
confirms this lesson of history.
The Democrats controlled the Senate on October 11, 2002 and provided political
cover for George Bush to invade Iraq. The Senate leadership could have
refused to even take up the resolution, or a few Senators who opposed
it could have mounted a filibuster.
But the fear of opposing a popular warrior President on the eve of a mid-term
election prevailed. Political calculations trumped morality, and the Middle
East was set ablaze. The Democrats lost in the election anyway, but the
American people lost even more. It was Politics as Usual.
Given the extreme importance of any decision to go to war, and I am anguished
to say this, it’s my opinion that anyone who voted for the war on
October 11––based on what President Bush represented––is
not qualified to hold the office of President.
Political leaders must bring two qualities to any public office:
political integrity and moral judgment.
If political calculations trump morality and occasion substantial loss
of human life, it reveals the sense of moral responsibility these candidates
are likely to bring to the office of President.
Saying “I would not have voted for the resolution if I had known
the mess it would create”––or worse, saying “the
decision was right but Bush botched the job”––is inadequate
rationale for a person who may hold the most powerful political position
in the world. Presidents have moral responsibility for the life and death
of millions of people.
Politics as Usual is not acceptable for the presidency.
I feel I am entitled to raise this issue because when I served in the
Senate, during the Vietnam War, I spoke truth to power.
I officially released the Pentagon Papers, and as a result, Richard Nixon
sued me all the way to the Supreme Court.
I successfully filibustered to force an end to the military draft.
I filibustered alone and with others to end the appropriations for the
Vietnam War. Those are my credentials. I’ve been there and know
how hard it is to oppose the majority of your peers.
I ask that you hold other presidential candidates to the same standard.
Political leaders who had the opportunity and the power to stop the Iraq
war before it could get started and did nothing––allowed it
to happen..
America's current political leadership must not continue to avoid the
obvious: Our presence in Iraq exacerbates the problem. Eighty percent
of Iraqis want American troops to leave their country, and 70% of Iraqis
think it’s OK to kill American soldiers.
We made a grave mistake. We should have the courage to admit it. We must
bring our troops home now––not 6 months from now, not a year
from now––NOW! One more American death for “our vital
interest” is not worth it. We all know “vital interest”
is code for “oil.”
If we don’t bring our soldiers home now, what do we tell the families
of those killed and maimed between now and some future arbitrary date?
The sooner we get our military out of Iraq, the sooner we can turn to
the international community to help with a diplomatic solution to bring
an end to the sectarian civil war we caused.
The Democrats in control of Congress need to act resolutely––and
I’m not talking about some mealy-mouthed, nonbinding resolutions.
They need to precipitate a constitutional confrontation with George Bush.
Under the Constitution, the Congress is the only body that can declare
war. Implicit in that power is the ability to end a war and make peace.
Even a Commander-in-Chief executing a war is subservient to the Congress’s
war powers. The Founding Fathers specifically created this constitutional
check on executive authority and it was re-affirmed by the War Powers
Act of 1973. Congress is the only hope we have, between now and January
20, 2009, to halt our continued involvement in the carnage and death George
Bush has unleashed.
Our nation is in crisis. This crisis is greater than most people realize,
and in some ways more significant than terrorism and the Iraq war.
We have become a nation ruled by fear. Since the end of the Second World
War, various political leaders have fostered fear in the American people––fear
of Communism, fear of terrorism, fear of immigrants, fear of people based
on race and religion, fear of Gays and Lesbian in love who just want to
get married, and fear of people who are somehow different. It is fear
that allows political leaders to manipulate us all and distort our national
priorities.
Fear has allowed our political leaders to spend more on military armaments
than is spent collectively by all the other nations in the world.
Who are we afraid of? Are we that paranoid?
Despite the trillions of dollars we spent on defense, the Bush Pentagon
sent our soldiers into harms way in Iraq without the proper body armor
and with insufficiently armored Humvees.
And worse, the Bush Administration plays games with the problems of our
veterans, in effect waging a budget war against the only Americans who
made any sacrifices in George Bush’s oil war.
Shame on you, George Bush, for letting the profits of arms contractors
trump the needs of our veterans.
President Eisenhower, upon leaving office, warned of the dangers to democracy
posed by a military-industrial complex. Since his warning, we have seen
a rise in the culture of militarism. His concern that our foreign policy
might be dictated by the financial interests “of an immense military
establishment and a large arms industry” has been fully realized.
We should remember a lesson of the First World War: the presence of excessive
weaponry in the hands of nation-states by itself is sufficient to induce
WAR.
The decision to wage preemptive war in Iraq raises the specter of a much
deeper problem facing the global community––nuclear proliferation.
On this issue, we should first look at ourselves. The U.S. has more deliverable
nuclear devices than the rest of the world combined. Just one Trident
nuclear submarine can hold the entire world hostage. Yet we continue to
build more nuclear devices. Who in the world are we prepared to nuke?
We started an arms race in space a decade ago, without provocation. Now
the Bush Administration is pressuring Eastern European countries to let
us station anti-ballistic missiles on their soil. Most Americans are unaware
that the Bush administration, under the cover of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, has been aggressively initiating a new arms race with Russia
and China, whose defense budgets are a small fraction of our own. Our
political leadership, controlled by military industrialists, insists on
pursuing a Cold War strategy in a post-Cold War era.
American political leaders often boast of American exceptionalism, as
you head from this dais. We are indeed a great nation, one that has made
significant contributions to humanity. But our leaders are promoting delusional
thinking when boasting that the United States and Americans are superior
to the rest of the human race. We are no better and no worse.
Unfortunately, the United States is not number one with what counts.
There are only two industrialized nations in the world that do not provide
health care for all their citizens: the United States and South Africa.
Despite spending more per capita on health care than any other nation
in the world, we rank 37th for overall health performance.
The United States ranks 49th in literacy. Time magazine reported last
spring that 30% of our students don’t graduate from high school,
condemning them to a diminished economic existence.
Of the Global Fortune 500 companies, only 50 are American. Wall Street
and many corporate executives are awash in huge salaries and bonuses,
yet the average American worker’s compensation grew only .1% in
the last decade.
China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan hold 40% of our government debt.
Any one of these countries could throw the U.S. into an economic tailspin.
America’s political leadership is in denial as to the gravity and
scope of our problems, viewing them almost exclusively from a national
perspective. In fact, the major problems we face are all global in nature––energy,
the environment, terrorism, drugs, war, immigration, disease, economic
and cultural globalization. These problems require global solutions that
can only be addressed by concerted diplomacy and cooperation, not jingoism
about America’s Super Power superiority.
Ask the current and former residents of the Gulf Coast to rank our national
political leadership for effectiveness either now or during the 17 months
following the ravages of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. These tragedies
exposed to the world that large numbers of Americans subsist in what is
closer to a “third world” economy.
They exposed how callous we are to the plight of the poor.
They exposed strains of racism we refuse to acknowledge.
But in the face of a painfully slow and ineffective government response,
this tragedy has inspired many average Americans to volunteer and help
rebuild not only homes, but a spirit of community.
Our political leadership must begin to tell the Americans the truth. So
I’ll start right now:
Here are some of the areas where the United States is No 1.

We are number one in the production of weapons,

We are number one in consumer spending,

We are number one in government, commercial and personal debt,

We are number one in the number of people we have in prison,

We are number one in energy consumption, and

We are number one in the environmental pollution we produce.

Our Democratic Congressional leadership is attempting to address some
of these problems, but there are serious limitations to the ability of
even well-intentioned political leaders, in part because of the limitations
inherent in representative government, and in part because of human nature.
Some skeptics might say that twisting truth for political ends is just
Politics as Usual––and that Politics as Usual is in the nature
of representative government. They accept as benign a system with 30,000
Washington lobbyists bundling campaign contributions for the election
of politicians who then support and vote for the interests of the lobbyists’
clients.
But the system is not benign. The corruption is real and cannot be reformed
by those who are enriched by the corruption. Only the People can correct
these structural flaws of representative government––if they
can become lawmakers, as envisioned by George Washington when he said,
“The basis of our political system is the right of the people to
make and to alter their constitutions of government.”
He was right to affirm the role of people as lawmakers on a par with their
representative lawmakers in Congress.
We, the People are the fount of all political power. We have the right
to propose and to enact the National Initiative for Democracy––a
legislative package that includes a constitutional amendment and a federal
statute that empowers Americans as lawmakers. A majority of Americans,
about 60 million, will have to vote for it in order to become the law
of the land. The National Initiative does not abolish representative government,
but it adds another Check to our system of Checks and Balances––We,
the People.
The National Initiative will provide a mechanism for us to finally have
a government not just “of” and "for" the People,
but, for the fist time in our history, a government “by” the
People.
I believe that we can have laws and policies that are more moral and more
reflective of the public interest if citizens can exercise their collective
self-interest by voting on major issues that affect their lives. Twenty-four
states and several hundred localities already permit citizens to make
laws.
I hope you will visit the web site––NationalInitiative.us––to
learn more and vote. Think about it. Do you agree or disagree that we
need to reform our government’s structure by bringing people into
the operations of government as lawmakers in a partnership with their
elected officials.
I’m proud to announce that the Democratic Party has been responsible
for a number of great social advances in the past. However, as one Senator
pointed out, it now anguishes for a new identity. Let me suggest the National
Initiative as an epoch-defining identity for the Democratic Party.
The National Initiative would provide an opportunity for the Democratic
Party to reclaim its role in American history, with an advancement in
human governance on a par with the nascent Republican Party’s role
in ending slavery on American soil.
The Democratic Party has the opportunity to undertake a change in the
paradigm of human governance and to champion the lost vision of our Founders,
and help make We, the People lawmakers. The statements of our Founders
cannot be clearer about their vision. They had faith in the American People.
Can we have any less faith in ourselves?
In this campaign you will hear from many who would be President. Judge
us not on how much money we raise from those who buy influence. Rather
judge us on what we have done. And judge us on the solutions we offer.
I have unreserved faith in the American People and my presidential candidacy
will champion empowering We, the People with real power, the central power
of all governments! lawmaking
Thank you.

Published on Thursday, February 8, 2007 by The Nation
Mike Gravel's Campaign
by William Greider

Last weekend, C-Span radio was broadcasting live the speeches of presidential
candidates before the Democratic National Committee in Washington. I was
listening in the car while running errands. Bill Richardson, the New Mexico
governor, was holding forth when I ducked into a store. When I got back
to the car, a different candidate was speaking, a voice I didn't recognize.
"We made a grave mistake," he said. "We should have the
courage to admit it. We must bring our troops home now--not six months
from now, not a year from now--NOW! One more American death for ‘our
vital interest' is not worth it. We all know ‘vital interest' is
code for oil."
Wow. Who is the guy?
"The Democrats in control of Congress need to act resolutely--and
I'm not talking about some mealy-mouthed, non-binding resolutions. They
need to precipitate a constitutional confrontation with the George Bush."
It's not Dennis Kucinich. I know his voice.
"We have become a nation ruled by fear. Since the end of the Second
World War, various political leaders have fostered fear in the American
people--fear of communism, fear of terrorism, fear of immigrants, fear
of people based on race and religion, fear of gays and lesbians in love
who just want to get married and fear of people who are somehow different.
It is fear that allows political leaders to manipulate us all and distort
our national priorities."
Yes! I was working up real enthusiasm for this guy, but still didn't know
his name. He then assailed the American-led arms race and the claim of
"American exceptionalism" made by some of his fellow candidates.
"We are indeed a great nation, one that has made significant contributions
to humanity. But our leaders are promoting delusional thinking when boasting
that the United States and Americans are superior to the rest of the human
race. We are no better and no worse."
I don't know if I've ever heard an American politician say that. He illustrated
the point by observing that Americans are mainly "Number One"
in production of weapons, consumer spending, debt, people in prison, energy
consumption and environmental pollution.
"The major problems we face are all global in nature--energy, the
environment, terrorism, drugs, war, immigration, disease, economic and
cultural globalization. These problems require global solutions that can
only be addressed by concerted diplomacy and cooperation, not jingoism
about America's super power superiority."
Amen. He talked too long, but what an inspiring speech it was. Afterwards,
I learned his name -- Mike Gravel, the former two-term senator from Alaska.
As a gutsy politician, Gravel was always out there. He championed the
Alaska state fund that distributes the state's vast oil revenues directly
to all its citizens. During the Vietnam war, he filibustered against renewal
of the military draft. He unilaterally declassified the Pentagon papers
by staging a one-man hearing where he read the documents into the Congressional
Record.
This year, Mike Gravel is running for president and promoting a national
initiative by which citizens could legislate laws directly. Look for him
at the "cattle calls" where Democratic candidates gather. He
is 76 years old. He is still speaking truth to power. They can't shut
him up.
William Greider, a political journalist and author, has been a reporter
for more than 35 years for newspapers, magazines and television. Over
the past two decades, he has persistently challenged mainstream thinking
on economics.